{"id":332052,"date":"2018-08-09T15:05:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T19:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=332052"},"modified":"2018-08-17T15:30:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T19:30:17","slug":"pitching-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/pitching-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitching politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former presidential speechwriter Curt Smith documents the twinned histories of baseball and the presidency.<\/em><\/h2>\n

George Washington was known to throw a ball\u2014for hours, reported one soldier under his command\u2014with his aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War. Abraham Lincoln would join baseball games on the lawn of Blair House, which still stands across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. \u201cI remember how vividly he ran, how long were his strides, how far his coattails stuck out behind,\u201d the home\u2019s owner, Francis Preston Blair, recalled in a letter to his grandson.<\/p>\n

The story of baseball in the United States is intertwined with that of the presidency, says Curt Smith, a senior lecturer in English and the author of\u00a0The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House<\/em>\u00a0(University of Nebraska Press, 2018). He traces the points of connection from the colonial era to the present, devoting a chapter to each president since William Howard Taft, who in 1910 inaugurated the practice of the president throwing out a ceremonial first pitch.<\/p>\n

Growing up in small-town Caledonia, New York, Smith would sit on his front porch, poring over the presidential biographies and baseball entries in the family\u2019s encyclopedia set. \u201cI was enamored,\u201d he says. \u201cFixated.\u201d<\/p>\n

He followed his entrancements to their ends, becoming a speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush and the person\u00a0USA Today<\/em>\u00a0once dubbed the \u201cvoice of authority on baseball broadcasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many politicians have been baseball fans, and Smith seized opportunities to talk about the game with people such as President Richard Nixon and New York Governor Mario Cuomo, once widely viewed as a likely future president.<\/p>\n

Nixon was uncoordinated and not much of an athlete, but he had \u201can endearing \u2018Walter Mitty\u2019 quality to him regarding baseball, which is true of many people,\u201d Smith says. Cuomo, by contrast, was a former center fielder in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system. But each of them saw strong links between politics and baseball.<\/p>\n

Both pursuits are combative, Smith says they told him. \u201cThey require strategy and the use of all your resources\u2014mental, physical, and often moral and spiritual. And neither pursuit is bereft of ego.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the high stakes of the presidency are self-evident, for millions of Americans\u2014Smith included\u2014the rewards and perils of the playing field are deeply felt, too.<\/p>\n

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt, asking whether the 1942 baseball season should go ahead as planned. Roosevelt gave his reply publicly, at a press conference: \u201cI honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president had concluded that the game was crucial to morale, both for troops abroad and on the home front. Smith writes: \u201cBaseball\u2019s cachet was so overwhelming that FDR did not consider obliging another sport . . . The priority here was the war, which baseball could help win.\u201d<\/p>\n

The game\u2019s fortunes have since declined. In the 1960s, television networks broadcast five regular-season match-ups per week. Now the only people who watch \u201calready love baseball. It doesn\u2019t court casual fans,\u201d Smith says. This \u201cfreefall\u201d in popularity pains him, and he has pointed suggestions for baseball\u2019s leaders on measures that he thinks would draw more people to the sport, including keeping the batter in the batter\u2019s box, enforcing the strike zone, and eliminating pitchers\u2019 delays.<\/p>\n

But the pleasure of what he calls \u201cthis evocative sport\u201d isn\u2019t in the technicalities, and the book weaves together political and athletic anecdotes. \u201cThere are a lot of statistics included, because baseball has a lot of statistics,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I hate the whole mania for analytics. I love stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

So do many politicians\u2014and baseball\u2019s legendary broadcasters. \u201cIt\u2019s known as the greatest talking game,\u201d says Smith. \u201cYou tell stories between pitches. Between innings. Between batters. Between games in a series.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of his own favorite stories is about the first President Bush. The captain of his college team and a tireless spectator, he told Smith he loved the game from the first time he picked up a bat, at age five.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball,\u201d Bush said, \u201chas everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of baseball in the United States is intertwined with that of the presidency, says senior English lecturer Curt Smith. 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